- [Narrator] If you're travelling in London
on the Underground today, and look at a Tube map,
you'll see that there are nine zones.
But how did we end up with those nine,
and when did it all start?
Up until the beginning of the 1980s,
all single and return fares for travelling on the Tube
were charged on a point to point basis.
But that all changed in 1981
when Ken Livingstone was voted leader of the GLC.
He brought in the first fare zones in October 1981,
when the area we know as zone one today
was made into two overlapping zones
known as West End and City,
within which flat fares were applied,
a first for the Underground.
Later the next year, other zones were introduced
behind the scenes but were not made official
until the year after that
when a brand new ticket type was also introduced.
Yes, it was in 1983 that the Travelcard first appeared,
and initially it was only available
as a season ticket, not a daily pass,
and was also only valid on bus and Tube services,
not British rail.
This meant a typical commuter might have a season ticket
to take their train into a London terminus
and then have a second season ticket, their Travelcard,
to allow them to travel around London on the bus and Tube.
With the introduction of the Travelcard
came five numbered zones.
The previous City and West End zones became zone one,
and then a band approximately three miles around this
became zone two,
and the rest of greater London was number 3A, 3B and 3C.
The Travelcard proved popular,
so popular that it made sense to bring in
a daily off-peak version, and that's what happened in 1984.
But it was still only valid on buses and Tube.
London didn't get a fully integrated
all modes transport ticket until 1985.
That's when the Capitalcard was launched.
It, too, was also a season ticket at first,
but the important thing was that it now allowed commuters
to have one combined ticket,
which let them travel on bus, Tube and rail.
It was a revolution for travel in the capital.
Just as the Travelcard had been launched as a season ticket,
with the one day variant coming later,
the one day version of the Capitalcard
took a year to arrive in 1986.
You could make unlimited off-peak journeys
with a price based on what zone you were starting in,
and in addition, and in a very smart move
that made them incredibly popular,
they were also available to buy
not just from London's own stations,
but now any railway station in the Network SouthEast area.
So there were two products,
the Travelcard and the Capitalcard,
which continued for three years until sensibly,
the railway companies got together and worked together
and merged the two to form the new Travelcard.
Both British rail and Underground stations sold them,
and it was essentially the Capitalcard rebranded
as the Travelcard, allowing travel on all modes.
And at the same time, zones 3A, 3B and 3C
were renumbered to three, four and five.
Then, in October 1990, zone five was split into two
to form zone six, but intriguingly, at this point,
the zones still weren't shown on the pocket Tube map.
It wasn't until after TFL reform
that zones first appeared on the pocket map in May 2001.
And when it did, there were also additional lettered zones,
A, B, C, and D, the stations on the Metropolitan Line
that were deemed to be outside of zone six.
That lasted until 2008,
when the letter zones were changed to create
zones seven, eight and nine instead.
And so, there have been nine zones on the Tube map
since 2008.
Some stations on the overground and TFL route
have since been placed outside the nine numbered fare zones
and then labelled, special fares apply.
In fact, the computer system behind Oyster
has the capacity for just a maximum of 15 zones,
but that is a story for another video.
It's also worth mentioning some splendid anomalies
in the top right of the map involving the Central Line.
Stations north of Woodford should really be
outside of zone six,
but a general subsidy by Essex County Council
means that TFL put them into zones five and six instead,
thus making them more fare friendly to commuters.
The stations between Roding Valley and Barkingside
on the Haymount Loop also used to all be in zone five
until it was decided in 2007 to move them
so that the whole loop would be in zone four.
And to finish up, it's worth noting that with the creation
of TFL in the year 2000, they brought in Oyster cards
in 2003 on buses and Tubes,
and wasn't fully rolled out across national rail services
in London until 2010.
Contactless bank card payments were introduced
onto the buses in 2012, which went cashless by 2014,
the same year that contactless cards
also came to Tube and trains.
And that brings us right up to date with the Tube map,
its nine zones, and 99% of people now choosing an Oyster
or contactless card instead of a paper ticket.